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Amazon RDS vs PlanetScale comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (2nd)
PlanetScale
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
21st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PlanetScale is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon RDS1.4%
PlanetScale1.1%
Other97.5%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Donny Trijatmiko - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at MyRobin.ID
Managed databases have simplified recovery and high availability for AI recruitment workloads
The features of Amazon RDS that I have found most valuable and useful so far are its fully managed service, point-in-time restore, and other serverless features such as snapshots and backups, which have eased my job to manage databases. The automated backups of Amazon RDS help in data recovery by mitigating disaster recovery. I can revert to the nearest time if there is any data corruption or other issues, and this helps tremendously. I assess Amazon RDS's read replica feature for improving application performance as good. For standby nodes in Amazon RDS, I am using them for high failover, and so far it has been performing well. I have used Amazon RDS's Multi-AZ deployments, and it helps enhance data availability by providing high failover. It enhances high availability for my application as well.
Shrikant S - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at RanceLab
Query insights have cut infrastructure costs and let full‑stack teams manage databases independently
In my opinion, the best features PlanetScale offers are recommendations and statistics on queries. Insights on queries have helped me and my teams significantly. For example, once while I was a CTO at Commutech, I received insights from a query that showed one specific query which checked permissions was selecting all permissions for a user instead of selecting a specific row. This increased the load on the database. Receiving that one insight helped me rewrite that query to only select the permission that needed to be checked, which made scaling possible. Such insights that pinpoint exact problems help in resolving scaling issues. PlanetScale positively impacts my organization by greatly improving productivity and saving significant costs. Typically, if I were to manage my own database, I would need someone to manage that infrastructure, keep updating things, and maintain backups. PlanetScale handles all of that, including backups. We can restore to a point in time using PlanetScale. All these things would normally require a specially skilled person to manage a database. Instead of that, we can have the full-stack developer developing the product manage the database themselves instead of hiring a specialized person just for management. Rather than spending on a DevOps person, we can spend that budget on a developer and build more features instead of spending money on just maintaining infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Based on my experience, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"It is stable, scalable, and easy to deploy."
"The IT is easy to set up, which is the best."
"It handles large-scale data migrations perfectly. Amazon RDS's performance is quite good. Charges are incurred after you utilize the service"
"Amazon RDS is quite a well-managed and stable service...The initial setup was very easy."
"It significantly reduces database management overhead."
"It is very easy to set up initially."
"I use Amazon RDS to store and manage data securely. It helps me retrieve information and gain insights from the data that comes in for my business or specific applications."
"One feature I appreciate about PlanetScale is its ability to handle migrations and commands without the need to run them manually in the database."
"The solution is beginner-friendly. Like any new platform, it can be a bit confusing at first. But after spending about an hour with it, you can get a clear idea of what everything is for. It's not very confusing; I think they've improved it recently."
"I like the solution's developer experience. When you deploy changes to the database in the portal, you can use different deployment strategies and see how things work. You can put changes into different branches, like deployment and staging. This is built into the product, allowing you to navigate changes through different branches."
"The branching feature is also good for developer experience."
"In my opinion, one of the best features PlanetScale offers is the ability to lock all changes to the database, so no particular developer can do changes that could break things for others."
"The database is accessible 24/7, ensuring my project runs smoothly without interruptions."
"I did not face any downtime when using the product."
"I recommend using PlanetScale as it provides ease of access and control over database changes using commands from the local terminal."
 

Cons

"The setup might be a bit challenging for multi-level applications."
"It would be helpful if they made it easier to migrate from an existing on-premises solution to the cloud-based service."
"Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern."
"Perhaps more platforms in terms of database engine versions would be beneficial."
"The solution's version upgrade and performance could be improved."
"It would be better if it integrated seamlessly with Microsoft products."
"The product must add more older versions of the database engines."
"When we depend on the AWS technical team, we need to pay more. For tech support, they are charging about 25% of the actual bill, which is too high for me."
"I would like PlanetScale to have a feature where the database can be accessed in the cloud with a link, allowing for a more user-friendly interface compared to the terminal."
"I used PlanetScale for hobby projects, so my perspective differs from someone using it commercially. Unfortunately, they've removed the free tier in recent months and pivoted to a business-to-business model. This is sad for hobby developers like me because it's a great product, but I understand they have costs to cover."
"The main thing I didn't like about PlanetScale was that we couldn't run analytical queries on it."
"We encountered some initial issues during the product deployment, which required me to search for solutions on forums."
"When I tried to integrate the solution with Firebase for authentication, I faced some interruptions. Also, when using it with Next.js and NextAuth.js for Google and social logins, I had some troubles."
"Recently we started noticing that because of the distance between the database and the server and our particular field, there may be some lagging and that may not be acceptable."
"I am not sure, but I think recently, the tool removed the free version."
"Regarding needed improvements, I wish PlanetScale would have a free tier so that startups could try it and then opt in for a paid feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The platform pricing is on the higher side, but given its capabilities and ease of use, it remains competitive."
"By using a combination of Reserve Instances and On-Demand pricing, you can reduce the cost."
"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"On a scale from one to ten, where ten is the most expensive, and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"In my case, MySQL is free, and if there are any costs, then it is much less than other solutions since all such things usually come bundled with the hardware."
"AWS is becoming pretty expensive because cheap or absolutely free services have become paid services. Amazon RDS is not an expensive product, but Amazon's ecosystem is becoming increasingly expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's price is good."
"Last time, when I wanted to use the tool in a project, I could see it was only paid, so I didn't use the service."
"I am currently using the product's free version, which has been sufficient for my portfolio project."
"The solution is expensive for beginners. That's why I wasn't motivated to use it more. But they were already providing many features for free for beginners, which was great."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
34%
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
I think Amazon RDS can be improved or enhanced if it can be implemented with other monitoring tools such as Percona. Currently, I am trying to add Percona monitoring for monitoring in addition to i...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS?
Amazon RDS is typically used for AI applications. I am developing it for an AI recruitment agent and for collecting data for HRIS, Software as a Service for a workforce as a service, and storing data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PlanetScale?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that pricing is good enough to be used at enterprise level. It is not cheap, but it is appropriately priced. I do not find it costly at all.
What needs improvement with PlanetScale?
Regarding how PlanetScale could be improved, especially considering my experience so far, if it were possible to handle the lagging problem, I suppose it is something that cannot really be changed ...
What is your primary use case for PlanetScale?
My main use case for PlanetScale is that currently, in the company, we are considering changing our current local database to PlanetScale for stability and other benefits, but it has not been deplo...
 

Also Known As

RDS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edmodo
Block, Intercom, Convex, MyFitnessPal
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. PlanetScale and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.